Alumni Gift Encourages Independent Pharmacists

The two pharmacists, of Madison, have given $100,000 to create the Burgess Lee and Jenny Fyke Atkins Independent Pharmacy Endowment "to honor their successful careers as independent pharmacists, recognizing their gratitude for the training they received as students" at the Ole Miss pharmacy school.

"Independent pharmacy has been a dying art for the last few decades as big box retailers and pharmacy benefit managers have claimed a stranglehold on retail pharmacy practice," said Lee Atkins, who owns HomeCare Plus, a Ridgeland business that is a pharmacy and a medical supply and equipment company that sells, supplies, rents and repairs medical equipment.

"Independent pharmacists are incredible people. I think they should be a resource that's never lost," he said. "I hope independent, community pharmacy will flourish, and this scholarship will serve to generate some growth, some continuation, some succession in that art because it is an art.

"I hope this scholarship endowment helps in some small way to sustain the practice of independent pharmacy."

Independent pharmacies are retail pharmacies that are owned by a pharmacist or a group of individuals.

An independent pharmacist, Lee Atkins' grandfather, John McElroy, inspired him to become a pharmacist. Atkins spent many hours in his grandfather's Rexall pharmacy on the square in Fulton, where they served milkshakes and Coke floats, and he recognized the community members' dependence on their pharmacist.

"The thing that struck me was how everyone who came in the store sought out my grandfather as a resource," Lee Atkins said. "He was always helpful, kind, well-liked and a trusted source of information for the community on medications and health …. I, too, wanted to be a resource for people on their health care."

Jenny Atkins also had a health-related influence in her life.

 "My dad was an internal medicine doctor, and I always loved science, medicine and math," she said. "Pursuing a pharmacy degree was just kind of a great fit."

The couple's decision to establish the scholarship endowment is a way for them to pay tribute to the memory of Lee Atkins' grandfather and to Jenny Atkins' family who had a long relationship with Oxford and Ole Miss.

"My grandparents were born in Taylor and lived in Oxford their whole lives," Jenny Atkins said. "My mother's cousins were the Faulkner family, and my great-aunt Dolly Faulkner lived in Memory House (home of the UM Foundation). My grandmother lived two houses down from her, and they were just the cutest sisters. I remember Oxford as a great small town where I could walk around as a child.

"As a student at the University of Mississippi, my grandmother played on the first women's basketball team at Ole Miss, and later in her 80s, served as the house mother for the Alpha Delta Pi sorority."

The endowment also stands as a monument to the blessings the couple has experienced.

"God has blessed us tremendously through our families, and in our education and our business," Lee Atkins said. "We want to be stewards of the blessings we have."

Donna Strum, dean of the School of Pharmacy, expressed appreciation for the gift.

"Jenny and Lee Atkins stand as role models for our pharmacy students," she said. "They have worked hard in the pharmacy field and are investing their resources in future independent pharmacists educated at Ole Miss.

"Their passion for independent, community pharmacies influenced this scholarship gift and ultimately will transform our students' lives and careers."

Lee Atkins graduated from Ole Miss in 1984. The Memphis, Tennessee, native's father graduated from Ole Miss in 1959, and the two attended Ole Miss football games together while Lee was growing up.

A Jackson native, Jenny Atkins transferred to Belhaven University after her freshman year at Ole Miss. After graduating from Belhaven, she returned to Ole Miss to earn a pharmacy degree in 1989. Both her parents are Ole Miss alumni.

First preference for the scholarship is directed to transfer students from Mississippi College. All three of the couple's sons earned degrees from Mississippi College before going on to pursue post-graduate medical degrees at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

Second preference for the scholarship goes to transfer students to Ole Miss from Belhaven University.

Gifts to the Burgess Lee and Jenny Fyke Atkins Independent Pharmacy Endowment can be made by sending a check, with the fund's name written on the memo line, to the University of Mississippi Foundation, 406 University Ave., Oxford MS 38655, or give online here.

For more information on supporting the School of Pharmacy, contact Laura Gullett, associate director of development, at laurahg@olemiss.edu or 662-915-2384.

Top: Ole Miss pharmacy major Anna Claire Harris, from Greenwood, administers a flu vaccine at the Grove stage. Lee and Jenny Atkins hope their new scholarship will help sustain the practice of independent, community pharmacy. Photo by Hunt Mercier/Ole Miss Digital Imaging Services